Don't Ignore Me
by Martin III
Summary: Haruhi is stalked by a terror of her own making. And the SOS Brigade can't help her this time - or is it that they won't?


Author's notes: This is something of a divergence from my other Haruhi Suzumiya fics, and indeed from my writing in general. It intermingles truths with half-truths, which I'll admit runs quite a risk. I'll refrain from explaining any further, to avoid spoilers, but do let me know how well or how poorly I did with a review.

The characters and milieu of this fan fiction work are property of Nagaru Tanigawa, Kyoto Animation, and Funimation.

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**Don't Ignore Me**

plot and script – Martin III

cover art – Jeffanime

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They all shuffled into the room and sat at their desks, like sheep, like lemmings, like pigs to the slaughter, and the most galling part to Haruhi Suzumiya was that she was one of them. She couldn't break away from it, couldn't escape.

As she sat there, in walked the one point of interest in her morning: Kyon. He was one of them, too, but Haruhi believed she could turn him into something better, somehow. At the least, it was enjoyable to try.

Today Kyon sat at his desk without greeting her. He did that sometimes. It was a little odd - not greeting the one person who gave his life direction? - but it didn't bother her.

"Hey, Kyon," she said.

No answer. She could see nothing of him but the back of his head.

"Hey! Kyon!"

Still nothing.

Haruhi sighed. Every now and then he was like this: totally lost in his own little world. Or, more likely given his character, just mentally comatose. His thought process was probably something along the lines of: _Blah blah blah School is boring blah blah blah Life is boring blah blah blah I'm boring._

Fortunately, Haruhi had two or three guaranteed cures for that condition. She reached forward, grabbed hold of his shoulders, and yanked him backwards until his head collided with the edge of her desk.

No reaction. He didn't cry out in pain or surprise, and when she let him go, he didn't turn around to demand an explanation; he just flopped back into place like a Weeble. Still showing only the back of his head.

"Okay, Kyon, very funny. Now knock it off and pay attention; I've got important news."

The back of Kyon's head continued to mock her.

She leaned across her desk to yell directly into his ear. "Yo! Numbskull! I know you can hear me! I haven't done anything to deserve this kind of treatment!"

He didn't answer. Didn't even budge.

This was really starting to piss her off. "Whatever it is that's got you in a huff, the least you can do is turn around and tell me what you think I've done wrong!" She gripped his ear between her thumb and forefinger and screamed into it, "Because I have no idea what it is, you hear me! Not! A! Damned! Clue!"

Silence was the only response.

She dropped back into her seat, fuming. "Forget it! You're not worth the effort. And if you were, I don't know how you expect me to make the effort when you won't even tell me what the problem is!"

Then Koizumi walked in and took his seat in the desk to her right. "Hey, Koizumi," she said, jerking her thumb. "This idiot here is ignoring me. Can you believe that?"

Koizumi just brushed a hand over his impeccable hair.

"Hey! Koizumi! Pay attention!"

"So, Kyon... What do you say we skip the club for today and go watch the ball game?"

"Sounds good to me," Kyon said.

"Excuse me!" Haruhi leaned forward in her desk again. "Perhaps I haven't made it clear before that anyone who skips SOS Brigade meetings gets the death penalty! What are you idiots thinking, anyway, discussing this right in front of me?"

Haruhi would have continued, but another familiar face approached: Yuki, book in her hands, approached and took her seat in the desk behind Haruhi.

Haruhi turned around to face her. "Hey, Yuki, can you believe those two? They've been ignoring me since they got here. What's up with them?"

Yuki just continued to read.

"Hey, Yuki, I know you don't like talking, but can you at least say _something_ so that I know you heard me?"

Silence. Yuki turned a page.

"Ohhhh, I get it." Haruhi turned around, giving each of them a look, and folded her arms. "You're all in on this together. Ha ha, very funny. We'll see how hard you all laugh when I issue your penalties at today's meeting. Penalties will be tripled for anyone who doesn't show up!"

None of them said anything. Not to her, anyway. Kyon and Koizumi were still chatting about the ball game. They stopped a moment later when Mr. Okabe came in, set down his things, and started up the class.

Haruhi was bouncing back and forth between listening to the lecture and planning her penalties for Yuki, Koizumi, and Kyon when Mikuru strolled in, sat down in Kyon's lap, and threw her arms around his neck. The two of them proceeded to lock their lips together.

"Hey... hey!" Haruhi belted out. "What do you two think you're doing?"

Kyon was holding Mikuru in his arms, kissing her with all the ardour of a blockbuster leading man, while she clung to him passionately.

"Stop it! Stop it! That's disgusting and wrong!" Haruhi raised her hand as high as she could. "Mr. Okabe! Kyon and Mikuru are making out at Kyon's desk!"

Okabe made no response, didn't even pause in his lecture. While Kyon and Mikuru kissed and groped each other like they needed to get a room, and the male students whistled appreciatively at them, Mr. Okabe discussed the rise of the shogunate.

"Mr. Okabe! Why are you ignoring me? Can't you see what's going on?"

Another girl in the class quietly raised her hand.

"Yes, Miss Asakura?" Mr. Okabe said, pointing to her.

Ryoko Asakura lowered her hand. "Mr. Okabe, I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but we have a behavioral problem."

"Finally, someone other than me noticed," Haruhi muttered.

"Mister Haruta is flicking rubber bands at Miss Yakushimaru. It really seems to be bothering her."

"Wh-what is wrong with you all?!" Haruhi shot up from her desk.

"Thank you for bringing that to my attention, Miss Asakura. Mister Haruta, would you kindly leave Miss Yakushimaru in peace?"

"Stop ignoring me!" She stormed up to the front of the room. "Look! I'm out of my seat! Now will you stop pretending I'm invisible?"

Okabe returned to his lecture. Ryoko bowed her head in thanks to both him and Haruta for settling the issue. Kyon and Mikuru continued to make out.

"Don't you two ever need to come up for air? Knock it off!" Haruhi grabbed the lovers by the scruff of their uniforms, one in each hand, and tried in vain to pull them apart. It was as if she had no more strength than a wisp of thread. "I said knock... it... oh, hell!"

She released them in frustration and walked up the aisles of desks. "Hey, Ryoko! You're always trying to get me to talk to you, aren't you?" She sat on top of Ryoko's desk. "Well, here's your chance! I'll talk with you about anything and everything you want!" Ryoko's gaze remained focused on Mr. Okabe. "Go on, pick a topic!"

Ryoko said nothing.

Haruhi got off the desk and stalked back down the aisle of desks, fists clenched with a rage greater than any she could remember having. "What is this?" she demanded. "A hidden camera show? Stop ignoring me!"

She turned and kicked over a boy's desk. He just sat there, eyes firmly riveted on Mr. Okabe.

"Don't ignore me! Do you hear?" She hefted a bomb over her head. "Don't... you... _dare_... ignore me!"

She threw the bomb down, and it exploded. Fire erupted from the center of the blast. Pieces of shattered desks and floor tiles flew everywhere.

When the dust settled, the classroom was little more than rubble and debris, but the students were all still seated as they were before, as if nothing had happened, with their backs facing Haruhi.

XXXXXX

Haruhi gasped, sitting bolt upright in bed.

The jump from the world of her unconscious to the real world had been sudden, violent. It took her a moment to get her bearings and process the information that the school day she'd just experienced had never really happened, by virtue of the fact that it couldn't have.

"Weird," she breathed. _For starters, Koizumi, Yuki, and Mikuru were never in my class. And Ryoko Asakura transferred months ago._

It wasn't one of the worst nightmares she'd had, but she certainly wasn't ready to go back to sleep. She got out of bed and went to the bathroom for a drink of water.

She gulped a glassful down in under five seconds and poured another. Facing herself in the mirror, she was forced to conclude that she looked a mess. Strands of hair were strung all over her face, her eyelids weren't ready to open all the way, and her pajamas looked like she'd been dreaming about being wrapped up in a straitjacket and thrown into the ocean.

After drinking her second glass of water, she glanced at the clock in the hall. Three a.m. _I hate nightmares._

She never used to have them. Never until she met Kyon. That sounded like a random association, but it had stuck in her head because her very first nightmare, a real doozy, came to her mere weeks after meeting Kyon, and it was all about Kyon. What she remembered of it, anyway.

As she sat down to do her business, she thought back over that first nightmare. The two of them were at North High, and there was nobody else in the whole world. Then she got excited, because she somehow knew she and Kyon were going to leave the world and go someplace better. She didn't know exactly how, but she knew they were leaving.

That was when the nightmare part began. Kyon refused to go with her. He rejected her hopes and wishes. He didn't understand her and he didn't want to be with her. And because there was no one else in the world, that left her all alone.

It felt like more than she could bear. One moment, she'd had everything she wanted; the next, Kyon took it all away from her.

And then... unexpectedly, incongruously... something _wonderful_ happened. She couldn't remember what. She woke up right as it happened, and couldn't get back to sleep. Even more than the terrifying loneliness the nightmare had brought, the struggle to remember what had happened that was so wonderful kept her awake. Her inability to recall that one detail was more than frustrating. It was as if, in forgetting that imaginary incident, she had forgotten an important part of herself.

Furthering the connection with Kyon, every nightmare she'd had involved him. Sometimes, like this night's example, Kyon's role was fairly minor, but he was always there. Which was weird because, apart from when she was actually talking to him, Haruhi hardly ever thought of Kyon when she was awake. For someone who interested her conscious mind so little, he was quite the regular in her subconscious.

It was odd, too, because she liked Kyon. He could be boring, and irritating, and even infuriating, but he had a mind all of his own, which was more than she could say for most people. So why did her subconscious decide to associate him with all her worst fears?

"Maybe he's a demon in disguise," she mumbled, and laughed slightly. It was too late at night, and her head hurt too much, for her to seriously entertain the idea that her life was an old horror movie.

Besides, she was occasionally blessed with good dreams with Kyon. She'd had one where she was a samurai and he was her apprentice. They were ambushed by bandits and fought them off. Kyon was injured in the battle, but she put him on her horse and brought him to a village where he was successfully treated by the local healer. He thanked her for saving his life.

She finished her business, washed her hands, walked back to her bedroom, and plopped back in bed so that she could stare at the ceiling.

It was no use. No matter how she tried to keep her thoughts on the soothing topic of Kyon, the frustration she felt in the nightmare kept clawing at her, as if she were still there in the classroom, being ignored. It was a feeling like being buried alive, being covered over and suffocated, feeling the inexorable approach of death, and not having the comfort of believing that anyone would remember her when she was gone.

Of course, she knew that was stupid. But the fear still disturbed her, as much as if she were still asleep.

XXXXXX

She woke up again. Not only did she not remember falling back asleep, which was of course normal, she didn't remember even feeling relaxed and restful enough to potentially get back to sleep.

_Whatever. At least I got in a few more hours before I have to go to school._

She got dressed, had breakfast, double-checked her homework, got her lunch together, and was out the door ready to make a fresh and early start. However grim the prospects looked, it was important to approach each day with energy and enthusiasm.

She seemed to reach school in the blink of an eye. Time could pass that way sometimes. When you had an objective in mind (and she always had at least _some_ objective, now that she'd formed the SOS Brigade), you didn't stop for anything, not even time.

She walked inside, and as her steps headed to the classroom...

...something cold gripped her chest.

It was like that feeling when you wake up from a bad dream, and you get up, get dressed, and go about your day... and you suddenly realize that you _didn't_ wake up, that you're still in the nightmare, and the bad things are about to start happening again.

With one important difference: Haruhi knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she really was awake.

After all, a dream couldn't fool you that way. A dream can only seem like reality so long as the dreamer doesn't consider the possibility that they are dreaming. Once that idea occurs to them, the illusion shatters.

This wasn't illusion. She was awake. But gripping her was the certainty that the things in her nightmare were about to happen again.

_That's nonsense,_ she told her fear. _None of them would ever ignore me. If they did, all I'd have to do is get in their faces and yell at them. And if their attention wandered again, I'd make them regret it._

But...

Maybe that was the point? If she got them to pay attention to her by yelling and submitting them to punishments, then they weren't really paying attention to _her_, were they? They were just reacting to something that was getting in the way of their ordinary routines.

If she just sat there quietly, listening to the lectures, eating lunch, working with the clubroom computer, would they still pay attention to her? If she didn't poke Kyon in the back, or yell anything in the middle of class, or present any grand schemes for the SOS Brigade, would they still notice she was there?

_Of course they would! I'll prove it!_

She walked into the classroom, sat at her desk, and steeled herself for a perfectly quiet day.

_Quiet as far as I go, that is._ She smiled. _I wonder how they'll all react?_

After a while, Kyon walked into the classroom. She stifled the urge to greet him or wave to him. She just smiled pleasantly at him as he approached.

He walked over and took his seat without glancing at her.

A lump formed in Haruhi's chest. _Okay. Calm down, stupid. __This __doesn't mean anything. Just like it didn't mean anything the dozen or so times he's done it before._

But the uneasy lump wouldn't go away. She found her hand picking up a pencil and moving to poke Kyon in the back. She caught herself just in time.

_No. I'm going to prove my point. I don't need to beg for attention._

The back of Kyon's head stared at her. She swung her feet back and forth under her desk.

Class started without Kyon saying a word to her. That only made sense; if he didn't think to say hi to her when he first got there, there was little chance of him thinking of it in the few minutes before class. But it was disappointing. And frustrating.

_A whole potential conversation down the drain, all because of a stupid bet I made with myself. There's a million things I could have talked to him about, too. Ugh. Kyon, couldn't you have picked another day to neglect me?_

The lectures were slow, as usual. She understood the concept being taught within the first ten minutes of each lecture, but instead of moving on to something else, the teacher just kept on explaining it over and over from angle after angle. It was hard to imagine a bigger waste of time.

She needed more sleep anyway, so at an appropriate moment she lay her head down and took a little nap.

When she lifted her head back up, the classroom was empty. No students, no teacher.

_Damn it, why didn't someone wake me when school was over?_

The gloom of early evening was already settling in. She collected her things and hurried down to the front gate. She pushed on the doors; they wouldn't budge.

"Are you kidding me?" She went around to the back entrance. Those doors were locked as well. "Oh, great!"

Then she thought she heard footsteps. A custodian, or something.

"Hey! Can you let me out? I've been locked in!"

No answer. The footsteps went silent.

_Uh oh. What if it's a stalker?_ She tried running down the hall a ways, to see if whoever it was would follow her.

Nothing. The only sound was her own footfalls and her own heavy breathing. But she knew she'd heard someone. And she knew that whoever it was was still there.

She started checking all the windows; they weren't designed to open, but maybe she could see something that could help her. As she moved along, she heard a softer set of footsteps closing in on her. There was something strange about them, she now realized. They didn't sound like they were produced by human feet.

She looked through another window. There were people standing outside, talking and laughing: Kyon, Mizuki, Koizumi, Tsuruya, and Mikuru. "Hey!" She rapped on the window. "Help! I'm locked in here!"

They just kept on talking to each other.

Suddenly she heard a footstep, very close. She turned and saw, emerging from the darkness, a leg that was long and gnarled and pulsing black and red. Going by human proportions, whatever it belonged to had to be at least ten feet tall. The rest of it was shrouded in darkness, but it wouldn't be for long.

Haruhi pounded on the window, screaming, "Help! Help me! You have to let me out! It's going to -"

Then she woke up.

She was sitting at her desk. The same lecture was still going on. She looked at the clock in disbelief. _I managed to have a nightmare in less than an hour? Ugh. At least I didn't sleep through anything important._

As she listened to the remainder of the lecture, she couldn't shake the niggling feeling that what she'd just experienced hadn't been _just_ a dream. Like it had some connection to the real world, and not just in a metaphorical sense.

She stayed at her desk for lunch for a change. Maybe Kyon would notice the difference, notice that she was there.

He didn't. Taniguchi and Kunikada joined him, and they talked among themselves. Inane boy talk. They talked about girls like they were some fabled destination, like El Dorado, as if there weren't one sitting right behind them.

The afternoon's classes went the same as the morning's. Minus the nap, of course. She was already rested up, and didn't want to risk having another nightmare. Even if she did seem to be in the middle of one.

_I wish classes would be over already. If anything is going to go well today, it'll be the SOS Brigade __meeting__. _But even as she forced that thought out, she had a sinking feeling that the meeting was going to play out no differently.

Class was finally dismissed. By this point, the mix of fear and anticipation was making Haruhi feel sick to her stomach, so instead of heading straight to the clubroom, she took a walk to settle her insides.

It didn't help much, but it was enough to make her confident that she wouldn't throw up or anything. She wasn't going to throw the towel in and go home just because of some lurking terror in the pit of her stomach.

She entered the clubroom and went to sit at her desk. Koizumi had his laptop open and was seemingly researching something. Mikuru, having already served the tea, was sitting down to study. Kyon was seated next to her, doing his own studying. Yuki was (what else?) reading in the corner.

None of them so much as glanced at her.

Haruhi clicked open the browser and checked UFO Sightings Daily dot com. She felt a moment of excitement when she saw the latest entry was a sighting at Izumisawa fishing port in Kikonai-cho, Hokkaido. It wasn't often that there was a sighting in Japan.

Then she shook her head and moved on to browsing for news on ghosts. Hokkaido was not remotely within reach for the SOS Brigade to do a follow-up investigation. Besides, the accompanying photo was not compelling. As certain as she was that aliens were on Earth, Haruhi was equally certain that not all of the hundreds of UFO sightings reported each year were genuine. If aliens were shy and secretive (and they had to be, since otherwise they would have introduced themselves to the general public by now), then there's no way they'd be so careless as to be spotted that often.

"Agh, I just don't get this."

That was Kyon, softly grumbling to himself, but Haruhi had become attuned enough to the sound of his voice that she could pick up anything he said beyond the faintest whisper. She glanced over and saw that he had his head in his hands, staring down at his open textbook.

"What is it?" Mikuru asked, leaning over to see what he was studying.

"Hnnn?" Kyon looked flustered by her nearness. "Oh, just balancing chemical equations. I can't understand how they can add more onto this side of the equation without putting the same thing on the other side."

"You're so hopeless sometimes, Kyon," she giggled.

Haruhi scowled. They were having one of their private discussions. She really wanted to put a stop to it, but she remembered her bet.

"Look, it's not like a mathematical equation," Mikuru continued, with a seriousness and competence ill-befitting a moe character. "Each of these represents just one molecule, and there are thousands of molecules in a single thimble." _A sewing-related reference. Well, that's appropriate at least._ "So if you need one or two more of this molecule to make what's on the other side of the equation, it's easy enough to take them. Like adding more of the ingredients in a recipe to make enough for more people."

"Ah... You're a very smart woman, Miss Asahina."

Haruhi ground her teeth together. She was really burning to say something at this point.

"Hah? Oh, no!" Mikuru was blushing in an adorable manner now. "Miss Suzumiya is much brighter than I am."

"She may get better grades than you, but if I were to say Haruhi is as dumb as a brick, bricks everywhere would be offended. Besides, she would never help me out with schoolwork."

_The hell? Who sacrificed the last day of her summer vacation to help you get your homework done? And where does a moron like you get off calling anyone dumb?_

"Really, you're heaven sent," Kyon finished.

"W-w-well, I'm always happy to help. It makes me sad to see you struggling..."

_Why are they doing this? They know I hate it when they have private conversations during SOS Brigade time. They're talking softly, but they're not idiotic enough to not realize I might overhear them. I'm barely two meters away, for crying out loud. Why..._

For a moment, Haruhi was so stunned that her mind went blank. As she sat at her desk, watching Kyon and Mikuru shamelessly flirt, the simmering anger she felt for them was replaced by a new feeling. A feeling she could not recognize or identify. It felt as though someone had just driven an ice pick into her chest. There was a sharp, stinging pain inside her like nothing she'd ever felt before, and she felt an inexplicable urge to burst into tears.

Whatever this feeling was, it was awful. The more she watched Kyon and Mikuru smile and whisper and blush, the worse it became. As she fought back the formation of teardrops, she made a feeble grasp for the anger, but it was gone. The only trace of it she could feel was the still burning question, _Why? Why are they doing this to me?_

"Maybe, while I'm here, I should give you a little help with your history work?"

"What makes you think I'm having trouble with history?" Kyon raised an eyebrow.

"W-w-well, while I was serving you tea yesterday, I just happened to notice..."

Then, when it seemed like the sharp pain in Haruhi's chest couldn't get any worse, it was replaced by a third feeling. It was as if Haruhi could see a black yawning abyss beneath her feet, growing wider with every second, leaving her no way to avoid falling into the consuming emptiness. She could feel her heart plummet below the point at which one must abandon all hope. This feeling was even worse than the previous one, but she could recognize it.

Despair.

Kyon and Mikuru seemed emboldened by her silence, chittering and poking each other like monkeys. Just as if she were no more than a lifeless paperweight. Something of no interest or concern.

"Okay, okay. Stop it now."

"But you - tee hee - started it!" Mikuru hissed out between her grinning teeth.

"You were asking for it."

Haruhi felt the abyss pulling at her with unrelenting force.

"But Kyon, you're the one who -"

She couldn't stand it any longer. She stood up in one sharp motion and bellowed, "Mikuru! An SOS Brigade meeting is not an appropriate time for fooling around or helping classmates with their studies! My cup of tea is overdue for refreshing, and unless I'm mistaken, so is Koizumi's! Now get to it!"

Mikuru cringed. "Y-yes, Miss Suzumiya! Right away!"

As Mikuru hurried over to the tea pot, hunched over like a cowering toady, Kyon glared reproachfully at Haruhi, as if _she_ were the one who had done something wrong. The worst part was, whenever he looked at her like that, she couldn't help but feel that she had indeed done something wrong.

"What are you looking at?" she snapped at him. "You haven't added anything to the club's website in months! Quit sulking and start brainstorming for ideas! I want a whole list ready by the time this meeting is adjorned, and you're not going home until I have one!"

Kyon glared at her a moment longer. His lips didn't move, but she could swear she heard him mutter, "I gave you ideas for the website months ago. You said they were too much of a pain. And you call me and Miss Asahina lazy?"

"Your earlier ideas were worthless," she said. "Give me something that will excite people and get them interested in the SOS Brigade!"

He looked away and did as she said. Mikuru came and refilled her cup with tea. Haruhi sat back down and released a huff.

The anger was a welcome relief. It didn't feel good - in fact, it felt rather like she'd just eaten an egg that had gone bad - but it was so much easier to bear than the feelings that had surfaced when she'd kept her mouth shut. No more of that, Haruhi promised herself.

She spent a couple more minutes fruitlessly browsing for interesting news that the SOS Brigade could investigate, but the atmosphere was uncomfortable now. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Koizumi glacing at her with worry.

She stood up, grabbed her bag, and announced, "I'm going home." She headed for the door, leaving her fresh cup of Mikuru's tea untouched.

"Don't you want my list of website ideas?" Kyon said, holding up a sheet of paper with a couple lines scrawled on it.

Kyon had no imagination, so his list probably consisted of stupidly dull suggestions and sarcasms. She wasn't in the mood for that now. "You can turn it in to me tomorrow morning. I'm granting you a grace period."

She closed the door behind her, not sparing them a second glance. Why did she have to yell at and rebuke them to get them to behave? Or, in Yuki's case, to do anything at all?

She walked down the quiet halls of the school. Left to her thoughts, she heard... soft footsteps coming behind her. Familiar footsteps.

Footsteps that didn't sound human.

She ran to the exit, afraid of what she'd find. To her relief, the doors opened immediately when she pushed them.

Just to be safe, though, she ran most of the way home.

XXXXXX

Her parents weren't home. No note. They'd probably decided to go out at the last minute, and not even spared her a thought. Typical.

She got changed out of her uniform into a loose-fitting light blouse and some shorts, then rooted through the refrigerator for veggies and sauce. _I'm probably the only teenager in the world whose parents go out on more dates than her. Well, except Yuki, since she doesn't seem to ever go on dates. And Kyon - he never goes out, or he'd have mentioned it to me. And - oh, never mind. I'm just one of a million others, as usual._

At least her lack of parental care had honed her culinary skills. As she whipped together a spicy stir fry, her one regret was that no one but her would ever know how good this meal tasted.

After she gobbled up her dinner and blasted through her homework, double-checking all her answers just for the heck of it, the loneliness started to gnaw at her. Ordinarily being alone didn't bother her, but today...

She thought of just going to bed. But she wasn't tired, and she had the sinking feeling that if she went to sleep she would have another nightmare. With no one else around, she kept expecting to hear those soft, inhuman footsteps again.

Wanting something to cheer herself up, she opened her SOS Brigade scrapbook to a random page. Photos of their summer retreat to the deserted island. There was Yuki, helping out on the boat... Kyon, looking so cute in his sleep... Mikuru, shyly posing in her swimsuit...

She flipped the page to view photos from their day indoors. There were plenty of shots of them having fun with Kyon's sister (what a sweetheart), and Mikuru had snapped a perfect shot of her creaming Kyon with a pillow.

She set the book down.

Memories were nice, but right at the moment she needed to talk to someone. Being ignored all day had that effect on her. She picked up her phone and dialed up Koizumi. If there was one person in her life who would never let her down, it was him.

"Hello, this is Itsuki Koizumi. I am sorry that I am unable to answer at the moment, but if you leave a message I will surely get back to you shortly."

_Screw you, Koizumi._ Now that she thought about it, she reached his voice mail quite a lot when she called him. What was it that kept that boy so busy?

She continued through her list of contacts. Kyon wouldn't be happy to get a call from her at this hour, especially after their little altercation at the meeting... Mikuru would be receptive, but her usual hysterics might prove contagious... Tsuruya's cheeriness would be grating right now... Yuki? Might as well spend the evening talking to the walls...

_Damn it, why are these the only friends I have?_ She had some contacts from her middle school days, but they were practically worthless, especially by this point. She'd burned those bridges and had no regrets about doing so. Calling her parents would be a waste of time, even if they weren't on a date.

Reviewing the crummy options, Kyon stood out as the best of the bad bunch. While not as reliable as Koizumi in most respects, when she called his phone, he answered. Always. And while most of what he said was a waste of time, every now and then he said exactly what she needed to hear.

She pushed the call button and held the phone to her ear. _What should I say? "Hi, I know it's late, but I need someone to talk to"? He'll hang right up if I tell him that. No, if I'm going to keep him on the line, I need a legit reason for the call. So, I might as well grab the bull by its horns._

"Hello?" Kyon's voice answered.

"Kyon." She kept her voice stern. "We need to talk about your behavior today."

A heavy sigh. "Can't this wait until tomorrow?"

"You almost completely ignored me all day. You didn't say a word to me in class, you wouldn't even look at me when I had lunch with you, and then you were goofing off with Mikuru as if I wasn't sitting right there!" It felt good to release her emotions. Especially to Kyon. She began to feel a burning hope that he would say something that would resolve the whole issue.

"Alright, I'm totally lost. What is it you were saying or doing that I was ignoring?"

"Nothing! You were ignoring _me_. Your brigade leader." She waited a moment, but Kyon remained silent. "Well? Do you not have any inkling of how it makes me feel that you won't give me the time of day unless I yell at you?"

"Haruhi." Kyon sounded weary. "You know the story of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf', right?"

"What does that have to do with anything?!" she spat.

"Just listen for a minute. The way you behave - telling everyone that you're searching for space aliens and time travelers, committing petty crimes, forcing the SOS Brigade into one crazy activity after another - it's like a cry for help."

Haruhi would have interjected something there, but her attention was caught by the sound of a footstep. A soft, inhuman footstep.

Perhaps she could have heard it before, if she weren't listening to Kyon, because that footstep sounded _very close._

"I'm not saying that's what it is," Kyon continued his lecture. "I know you're sincere about wanting to find aliens and such. But it amounts to the same thing: You're like a little kid who's always demanding attention. After a while, that gets pretty tiresome."

Another footstep, and this one was different. The previous footstep had the flat tone of a foot falling on concrete or asphalt. This one instead came with the faint creak of wooden flooring.

Haruhi's breath went still.

"Sooner or later, there comes a point where we get tired of your games, and that may be the day when there really is a wolf among your sheep."

She watched, riveted to the spot, as a leg that was long and gnarled and pulsing black and red stepped through the doorway into her room.

"K-Kyon," she choked out.

"Let me finish. I know this is hard for you to hear, but someone has to say it. If you don't want everyone ignoring you for the rest of your life, you need to change your behavior before it's too late. Another thing that might help is if you paid attention to someone else, instead of expecting everyone to pay attention to you."

Into her room stepped a creature formed of dead roots and swollen blood vessels and knotted barbed wire. It turned unmistakably in her direction. Haruhi clutched the phone in her hand as if it were her lifeline.

"Today makes a perfect example. All that time you were raging inside about me not saying anything to you, did it ever occur to you to say something to me? You could have asked me how I was doing, for a change. I know you don't give a damn, but if you at least pretended to care, I'd appreciate the effort."

The creature stepped towards her. "Kyon... There's something here..." she said, but her voice came out as only a hoarse whisper.

"It would be even better if you paid Miss Asahina some attention. You obviously like her more than anyone; you're always so delighted to do things with her. When I came into the clubroom last Thursday, she was sniffling, and you were just sitting there checking websites. If you had treated her like a human being with feelings, maybe today she would have paid more attention to _your_ feelings."

The creature had paused for a few moments when she spoke, but it now advanced again. Even though it had no discernible head, she could feel it peering at every part of her.

"Kyon..." she continued in her weak whisper, too low to stand a chance of being heard over the phone. "Please, you've got to come over here and help me..."

She knew the creature wasn't real. It couldn't be. But she also knew from the feeling of the floor under her feet and the sweat dampening the surface of her phone that she was not dreaming. That could only mean that she was hallucinating, and the notion that she was hallucinating such a sick, towering monstrosity was, in a way, more terrifying than the notion of it being real. There was a limit to what horrors reality could visit upon her. The mind had no such limits.

But in the midst of that fear was the certainty that if Kyon would only bicycle over to her house right now and put his hand on her shoulder, she would be safe. Everything would be alright.

_So why can't I ask him to do that in a voice loud enough for him to hear it?_

"Anyway, that's all I had to say. Thanks for listening for a change. For a second I thought you must have hung up on me, but I can still hear you breathing."

He was going to hang up. "K-Kyon!" she said, hitching her voice up to finally manage a volume almost as loud as her normal speaking voice. "Don't hang up on me! Don't you dare hang up!"

He sighed. "Look, I'm really ready for bed. You can tell me all about how everything I just said is completely wrong tomorrow morning."

The creature was now close enough to touch without reaching. The skin on its torso began to ripple, as though something inside was bubbling to the surface. She couldn't speak. She couldn't breathe.

"Good night, Haruhi."

She was too frozen stiff to look at her phone's display, but somehow, she knew that Kyon had just hung up.

The skin at the center of the creature's torso completely peeled back, as out pushed a black, shark-toothed mouth with a thick neck. The lips parted, and it spoke to her:

"You're afraid."

The phone dropped from her sweaty fingers. "Y-you'd better get out of here," she managed. "Any moment now Kyon is going to be sorry he hung up on me and he's going to come over here and you're going to be nothing, nothing, just something bad I ate for breakfast this morning, just..."

"You're afraid of what Kyon would think of you if he knew that you needed him in any way. That's why you couldn't ask him to come save you."

_This isn't real. This can't be real. Monsters don't just come to the houses of teenage girls and talk to them in plain Japanese about why they can't ask their friends to come over._

"What an amusing reversal. A god saying that she doesn't believe in her creature." Pinkish saliva dripped from the creature's mouth. "I speak to you in plain Japanese because that's what you speak. As soon as I first approached you, in the school, I knew everything you know."

_I'm talking to myself. That's what's happening here. I'm talking to myself and my hallucinating brain is personalizing it as a sick monster. Stop hallucinating, damn you!_

"That's why I know that you know Kyon is right. All your friends are going to just ignore you more and more. You'll drag them along on your little adventures, but all that will matter to them is your ability to command their obedience. Not you yourself. And even that superficial attention won't last forever."

_No. No. Shut up shut up shut up!_ Haruhi hugged herself with trembling fingers.

"You know why it hurts so much to see Kyon flirting with Mikuru. You _know_."

_No I don't no I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't! Leave me alone!_

"It hurts because you're not as dumb as the other sheep. The others fritter their days away, thinking it will all last forever. But you, you've thought ahead."

Haruhi clutched her hands over her ears to block out what the creature was going to say, but its words penetrated her flesh with ease.

"You know that graduation comes in a few years, and that everyone will then go their separate ways. You'll probably see them now and then after that, but for all intents and purposes, graduation will be goodbye. Goodbye to Koizumi. Goodbye to Yuki. Goodbye to Mikuru. Goodbye to Kyon."

_No._

"Of itself, goodbye is nothing especially painful. Goodbye is part of life. Young as you are, you've already said a final goodbye to many of the people you know.

"But Kyon is the one person you can't bear to say goodbye to. If Kyon walks out of your life, you'll have no one who really understands you. You can't stand the thought of a day when you won't have him there to talk to. And seeing him flirt with Mikuru reminds you that that day is inevitable. Because he has an attachment to her, and he doesn't have any to you."

_It's not true. Kyon won't abandon me. He won't._

"There's a slim chance that the others may stay in touch, if you treat them right. But the problem with Kyon is different. He's like you... he craves excitement and mystery. You offered those things when he first met you. It's why he was interested in you. But now... He's bored of you."

_Why is it talking so much? __Why doesn't __it__ just try to eat me? Unless... Maybe it is. Maybe it's __an__ emotional vampire that feeds off of the fears and despair of its prey. I'm as likely to hallucinate that as anything else._

"You were careless. Instead of keeping an aura of mystery, you laid yourself bare before him, both literally and figuratively. You never paid attention to whether anyone was watching you while you changed clothes before, but that first day you ordered him out of the clubroom so you could change, you knew, from his complete lack of interest, that he'd already seen everything you had. And then, that day when you investigated Ryoko's mysterious transfer, you told him everything. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your despair, the reason why you hunt aliens, espers, and time travelers. As if it wasn't enough for you that you'd already told him all about your interests and dating habits. A psychiatrist wouldn't want to know as much about you as you told him."

And then Haruhi knew. She knew why she'd started having nightmares. Why her nightmares all included Kyon. Why that first one had centered on him not wanting to be with her.

Because that first nightmare had come just a few days after her telling him how insignificant she felt. Just enough time for her to have noticed Kyon's resulting loss of interest in her.

"You continue clinging to the hope that Kyon will come to like you enough to answer your phone calls after graduation, but deep down you know he never will. So you keep on demanding everyone's attention with your schemes and your orders and your punishments. You stopped believing before today that such methods can keep their attention in the long run... but they're all you know how to do."

Haruhi squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fists still more tightly over her ears. "Go away!" she screamed. "Just go away! You really think I'll just wither up and die if they don't worship me? Then you don't know anything about me! If they ignore me, that's their problem. When they've faded away into their little nothing lives, the name Haruhi Suzumiya is going to be famed far and wide. Not answer my calls? Kyon will never admit it, but he'll have to consider himself lucky that I take the time to call him. All of them will. And those calls will be the one piece of excitement left for them. So everything you've said is nonsense. You're nonsense! You're _nothing!_"

After this last statement, all Haruhi could hear was the sound of her own panting. No monstrous voice answering. No soft inhuman footsteps. No Kyon pushing her doorbell. No ringing of her phone.

She dared to open her eyes and look up. The creature was gone. No, not gone... It didn't exist.

And Haruhi Suzumiya was alone.


End file.
